Redtree Times

Island Getaway— Now at the West End Gallery

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

—Bertrand Russell, The Study of Mathematics (1902)

The painting above is a late addition to my current West End Gallery show. I call this 8″ by 24″ canvas Island Getaway.

Islands have been prominent in many of my paintings over the years. There’s probably a psychological basis for this, something about it representing a withdrawal from the outer world, about finding a space for personal autonomy. Or maybe it symbolizes, as Russell puts it above, an escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

The Exile as a symbol has always been close at hand in my work. I can see the figure in this painting as some sort of exile. Perhaps a self-imposed exile, driven by the desire to be free of the bonds of society.

Or maybe the figure needs a break from wearing their public mask and retreats to a solitary place where they can just be.

Maybe.

I don’t know exactly what they mean. I do know that they feel like core work when I am painting them. By core work, I mean that it feels like they come from and represent some central location within myself. They feel absolutely natural and organic in the way they emerge.

Little thought, all reaction. That’s often the recipe for what I consider good work.

Here is a song from Laura Marling that came on just as I was writing this. Felt like a good fit for the painting. It’s called Goodbye England (Covered in Snow).

Now leave my island, please. Thank you.